


Forces of Destruction

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-03 06:09:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10237541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: A thank-you would have been nice, but the lack of one was just a reminder that Shougo was still Shougo, if not quite as vindictive and aggressive as before.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Plume_Sombre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plume_Sombre/gifts).



> hope you like it! i'm not all that familiar with fantasy type stuff so i figured some sort of vaguely-defined urban fantasy setting would work best lmao so i hope it works for you~

The first time they’d met, Ryouta had felt like he was going to choke. He’d seen Haizaki Shougo from far away, had a vague idea of who he was, one of the brightest magicians in their year (if only he didn’t waste his potential, but that’s always the thing about fire magicians) who too often skipped the prestigious advanced classes people fought to get into. He hadn’t been there on Ryouta’s first day, skipping again, but he had darkened the doorway like a cloud of volcanic ash on the second. Ryouta had felt it, the dryness in the air, the sloppy uncontrolled power that rubbed his own magic raw. He’d wicked away all the moisture in the classroom and Ryouta could feel his throat shriveling, had tried to draw on his own well of power the way he’d been taught, had tried to turn his focus away from the way his suddenly-dry skin was itching, had felt the ashes in his throat—and then Akashi had stepped between them, blocking them both off, but Ryouta had barely been able to concentrate through the lesson.

Ryouta had always known of the nature his own powers, the way he could manipulate bathwater, speak through the taps, pull the ocean waves toward him at low tide. It’s an uncommon set of powers; his parents had had him taken to a specialist and the specialist had told them to come back later because water powers don’t generally start to show their extent until puberty. So Ryouta had waited, and he hadn’t cared. He’d taken all the low-level magical classes for kids with little aptitude and yeah, he could manipulate the moisture in the air and tell when there was a leak in the air conditioner but those are party tricks.

He’d always had those, though; they’d always offset him a little and made the other kids leery, but Ryouta has always had the malleable temperament of water to roll with the punches, to take the shape of the container they put in him and spring back to that. It just hadn’t turned into anything until his second year of middle school, and then it had all happened so suddenly, a few weeks of playing catchup on the stuff the other powerful kids had learned in first grade and then he’d been switched to the advanced class.

He and Shougo had been the only elemental magicians, and so conflict was natural. It had started out on Shougo’s side, releasing his power like some kind of animalistic show of dominance, but it had made it that much easier for Ryouta to catch up. He’d always been good at analyzing and reacting to other powers, and even though Shougo had had more it’s the same principle on a larger scale. Or it had been until Shougo had abruptly dropped the class.

They’d crossed paths a few times after that in school, and Ryouta had always been able to feel him, the air withering and shimmering around him like the centimeters above the grass on the school soccer field on a hot day in the summer. It had never felt like choking, always somewhat more measured, though Ryouta had braced himself for it every time.

Once, he’d reached out, grabbed Shougo’s wrist out of curiosity, half-expecting to be burned but finding only pleasant heat on rough skin. Shougo had whirled around and grabbed it back as if Ryouta’s touch had stung him.

“Get the fuck off me,” he’d said, curling his mouth into a smokelike snarl and walking off until he’d disappeared into the crowd, and that had been the last time Ryouta had seen him for a while.

And somehow (more complicated than just the word) they’d gone from that to this, Shougo lying on Ryouta’s chest snoring loudly on the couch.

It hadn’t been sudden, the next day; it had been years of Ryouta showing up to put out forest fires and feeling something familiar in the air when he’d tried to grab at the moisture and condense it, something that had always reminded him of Shougo (but every one of them couldn’t have been him). It had been abandoned buildings, razed to the ground the next time Ryouta had passed them, turned to ashes whether by controlled demolition or arson or something between the two, until he’d walked by a house still smoking and collapsing, what had been an old house in a residential area destroyed, sloppy borders of singed lawn but no damage to adjacent properties. It had looked like classic arson-for-insurance, some developer hiring a fire magician for cheap so they don’t have to deal with safe demolition and regulations and unions and they get a kickback from the property insurance to boot. Ryouta could still smell the magic in the air, a little uncomfortable but far enough after the worst of the damage (a few minutes at most, because there was no way no one had noticed or called the fire department, but long enough for it all to burn off or seal away inside the magician themself).

And then out of the bent metal that had remained of the doorframe, a figure had stumbled. Ryouta knew him right away, and Shougo had looked bad. He wasn’t wearing any of the regulation safety equipment, just a cheap gas mask and what had looked like fireproof pants; his arms were bare and Ryouta could see from this far away that he’d got some easily-second-degree burns.

“Shougo-kun?”

Shougo had looked up, practically hissing in pain.

“You need to get to the hospital.”

“No I fucking don’t,” Shougo had spit, bracing his body as if he was going to have to fight Ryouta off.

“Your arms—”

“I’ve had worse. You don’t even fucking know, Ryouta.”

He pushes his way past.

“I can’t stay here; they’ll know it’s me and then I’ll get arrested and I won’t get cut a fucking check for this.”

“So go to the hospital—”

“And tell them what? I’m a fire magician but I burned my arms trying to take a cookie sheet out of the oven without putting on oven mitts?”

That hadn’t sounded too out-of-the-question for Shougo, so Ryouta hadn’t said anything.

“Look, Ryouta, don’t play the hero. You’ve done your due diligence or whatever it is that makes you sleep at night, but I’ve got places to be.”

“Please, Shougo-kun?” says Ryouta.

Shougo had given him a funny look, as if he was trying to figure out Ryouta’s game (and if he hadn’t figured out there wasn’t one, well). The sound of a fire siren in the distance was unmistakable (and they were lucky as it was that no one immediately-adjacent had come out to get a closer look and seen them); Ryouta had looked at Shougo.

“Fine,” Shougo had said. “But don’t expect my like, eternal gratitude or shit like that.”

A thank-you would have been nice, but the lack of one was just a reminder that Shougo was still Shougo, if not quite as vindictive and aggressive as before.

After that, Ryouta had started running into Shougo more often (almost as if Shougo had been planning it, though he’d never admit it), and then they’d started making plans, and then, somehow (because that’s too complicated to think about right now) they’d ended up like this, Ryouta’s hand slipped into Shougo’s (he’s long since stopped pulling away), burn scars raised like the back side of an inscription against Ryouta’s fingers, the parts of Ryotua that are usually cool deep within him warmed by the furnace driving Shougo’s veins. Unlike the fire he wields, Shougo is solid, heavy, tangible; Ryouta had stopped thinking of him as an extension of his powers a long time ago (even though it’s hard enough for Shougo himself to know that distinction, because those powers are all he’s ever known, all people have ever judged him for).

Shougo starts awake, as if he knows when Ryouta’s thinking about him, almost like a cat. He snorts, yawns, sits up and pushes down against Ryouta’s ribcage. Ryouta shifts; it’s fucking uncomfortable and he’d like to be able to breathe.

“What?” says Shougo.

“Get off,” says Ryouta, pushing at him.

Shougo sighs and pushes himself off Ryouta and onto his feet. He still looks half-asleep, his shirt all mussed up and his eyelids drooping. If it were anyone but Shougo it would be cute and it still kind of is.

They rearrange themselves on the couch, Ryouta taking the left side and Shougo spilling over from the right the way he always does, one arm around Ryouta’s shoulders oh-so-casually and his feet kicked up on the coffee table. He seems content to just stay there in silence, and he’s probably closed his eyes again even if he’s not back to sleep yet.

Like this, curling his body toward Ryouta’s, it’s hard to see him as a forest fire, volcanic ash, pooling heat—maybe like a dry leaf beginning to curl at the edges on the top of a bonfire in the fall, but no more than that. But, then, none of that—none of the razed forests, building skeletons, canyons carved out by rivers, villages washed away by a tsunami—none of that destruction matters, really. It does, in a general sense, but here, now, at this micro-level it doesn’t.

“Oi, Ryouta,” says Shougo, waving his hand in front of Ryouta’s face.

“Hmm?”

“You were spacing out.”

“I was thinking,” says Ryouta.

Shougo snorts. “Right.”

Ryouta pinches his thigh; Shougo knocks his knee against Ryouta’s; Ryouta kicks at Shougo’s ankle.

“See if I tell you anything,” says Ryouta.

“What makes you think I want to hear it?”

The look of interest on his face and the warmth in his hand on Ryouta’s shoulder give him away. And whatever it’s taken to get this far, Ryouta’s glad they’ve ended up right here.


End file.
